A rapid concretisation of houses in Dhaka and other divisional and district cities is pushing the growth rate of water pump sales by 15 to 20 percent a year.
The growth of water pumps in industries and irrigation is relatively low because sales to these sectors depend on availability of power and new electrification, market players said.
Although there is no authentic data on the actual size of the market, industry people said it would be worth around Tk 100 crore and has been growing at a double-digit rate for the last few years.
“A big chunk of our sales is now coming from households,” said Tarequzzaman, an official of the local distributing company of Italian Pedrollo brand water pumps.
The company alone sold over 50,000 water pumps, mostly to households, in 2008.
“Sales of industrial water pumps are a bit slow at the moment,” Tarequzzaman said. “And irrigation purpose is completely seasonal and the sales too.”
Mobarak Hossain, national sales manager of AnB, said increased demand from households is helping the sales of the pumps to grow at 15-20 percent.
Gazi, Pedrollo, Rangpur Foundry Limited (RFL) and AnB are the major market players. Except Pedrollo, all the other companies import Chinese products and market those.
A household pump costs Tk 1,800 to Tk 10,000, irrigation Tk 5,000 to Tk 20,000 and industrial pump up to Tk 3 lakh.
According to industry insiders, Gazi Pump is the market leader in terms of sales.
“We are the leader in the local water pump market,” Badrul Alam Khan, a director of the company, said, but declined to disclose his company's sales figure.
Dozens of new importers, based in Nawabpur wholesale and retail markets, are also surfacing to cash in on the growth in demands and easy availability of low-cost Chinese products. There would be around 100 importers of those kinds.
A small number of pumps are also imported from Germany and India.
It was seen in the Nawabpur retail markets that a one-horse-power Pedrollo pump costs Tk 9,500, which is nearly Tk 5,000 for a Gazi pump and Tk 1,800 to Tk 3,000 for a Chinese pump.
“Sales of China-made low-cost water pumps are rising,” said Mohammad Selim, an importer of two Chinese brands -- Kaifu and World.
Generally, lower-income segment of the society buys cheap but five-year-warranted pumps, he added.
Source: thedailystar.net
